Manchester City will travel to the Estadio Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan for their first CL group G match of the season and only a win will wash away the memories of their dramatic exit being dumped out by Real Madrid 6-5 on aggregate in last season’s semi-finals.
Manchester City will be in high spirits contending their twelfth consecutive CL campaign despite dropping points away at Villa Park last time out. City will be hungry to kick start the Champion League campaign in style this week. This is the one the fans, owner, players, and manager all have their eyes on.
Sevilla on the other hand have started very poorly, earning only a point in 4 games and that leaves them lingering in 16th place, Lopetegui has been chopping and changing his starting 11 and I don’t think he knows his best team yet, leaving the element of surprise a real danger for City. We’ve also seen many times before how the form book goes out of the window when it comes to European football. So, this isn’t as cut and shut as the odds would have you believe. Sevilla has one of the best records in European football over the past 10 years and they will be relishing this first-round tie.
Man City are on a run of 7 unbeaten and Haaland is flying scoring B2B hat-tricks, taking his total up to 10 in just 6 games. City have scored 20 times in the PL thus far conceding 6 and they sit in 2nd place with 14 points.
When these two were drawn together in the same group back in 2015, Man City won both home and away 2-1 & 1-3, that year Sevilla failed to qualify, coming in 3rd and City won the group with 12 points and Juventus came 2nd with 11.
Key stats
* Haaland scored 10 times in 6 games
* Sevilla no win in last 4 games
* City have lost 5 times in the last 50 matches
* 55% Sevilla, 65% Man City BTTS over the last 20 games
No doubt Sevilla will be watching tapes of how Villa and Newcastle played against City and they’ll try and replicate what they did in an attempt to stop what is probably the best team in the world right now, but unfortunately this time they’ll fall short, losing 1-2 with Haaland netting twice.
